The Waiting is Also the Gift

 

This is a poem that I can't write yet,

I find that I don't know this truth—

I only know that it rings true

with all its resonance inside of me

All I know now is the melancholy

of holy waiting—the ache of longing...

Longing to belong to someone,

someone who is mine like no one else

I want to ring all the bells

inside someone else's soul—

to give them my soul and body

for always. I want them to stay...

My biggest fear is that someone

would know me—all of me—

and then leave, taking my soul

and breaking my heart to death

Will I ever learn that

the waiting is also the gift

Or will I simply feel

like it is always the hardest part?

Will I ever get to fully give

someone else my open heart

and have them care for it? Will they stay

when who I am should scare them away?

If waiting is all there is

Lord, help me to know it as gift.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I wrote this in March 2022. Though quite a few things have shifted in my life since then, I still feel like this is a poem I can't write yet.  —JB

Tears

The candles are crying waxen tears

        from their unseeing eyes—

Their little frames have 

        no hearts to break

no wound to bleed like mine

My own grief pools red and hot,

        or cools upon my cheek,

my waxen heart cannot feel

        unless it is this emptiness—

My loneliness none dares to break

Candles burn bright and

         candles burn low—

Grief and loneliness don't fill me

         they hollow out my feeling,

stealing life, their appetites grow

What can fill grief and sorrow,

          loneliness and death?

Their hunger growls and I diminish,

          their ache digs deep

to ravage my every breath—

Breath! Spirit of God poured out

           like melting wax—

Unlike water in the wilderness

           the Spirit is not swallowed—

He fills and heals each crack

Cracks in my soul that run

            deep and hungry ache,

He finds the bottom and

            fills the deep wells

making a pool of Beauty—a lake

A lake of salty tears

            that now reflects

the Light, the stars, the silver moon—

            and bathes the travellers' weary feet,

a gift, a healing they did not expect.

November

Dear Aaron,

It is Thanksgiving today. My family is gathered around their table, spilling over from its limited space. Your family and our friends are gathered around the table in your house. Your sister and her family are gathered at a southern table. I am at my cabin this Thanksgiving, watching snow drip from the eaves, listening to the crows cry out in the cold. And you? You are banqueting with the King of kings. Where you are, every moment is Thanksgiving. Would that we all lived in that state!

Yet...we don't. So when the crows cry, I want to cry with them. When a Switchfoot song plays unexpectedly in a film, all I can think about is you. It doesn't hurt me, exactly, I love thinking about you—but the separation, before your death and even more by your death—that hurts like hell. Oddly, it isn't Hell that separates us now but Heaven. How can this be?

Oh friend, I miss you. . .

Loving isn't gonna burn us out

Missing Aaron a lot tonight, so I picked up a letter of his from Easter ten years ago... Inevitably, he was quoting Switchfoot songs, which landed me somehow at the feet of this Jon Foreman song. The verses sum up my past four months, the chorus flooded in at Holy Week. 

Thank you, friend, for reaching out to me across time and space; for speaking truth into my life; for the flame of your love burning still. I miss you. So. Much.

YOU ALONE

My soul
Sing the one you know
Sing like a soldier
Whose hopes are running low
I fold
I'm giving up the ghost
I surrender any illusion of any semblance of control

You alone
You alone
You alone
Can heal my soul

It feels like you're running but
you're not getting nowhere
When did your fire get so cold?
It feels you're fading out
Into the jaded crowd
Look to the One who calls you Home

You alone
You alone
You alone
Can heal my soul
Come heal my soul

💔 Johanna

Maundy-Thursday

We streamed out of the aisles like tears,
The grim voice in the darkness, clear, 
Had not allayed our fears—
It said, "Go! There is nothing left for you here."

We left the stone walls in silence,
Not one atop the other cried out—
All we knew was darkness and fear of violence,
As one by one we deserted Him on the mount

We set our feet to wandering ways,
Not steadfast pilgrims but scattered sheep—
Scant days ago our mouths were filled with praise,
But this night our eyes are full of sleep

We long to return from the exile
of our own choosing, the darkness bitter
with tears that drop as we toil mile after mile,
Under the black sky, void of stars that glitter

We walk the road of memory this night
that is different from all others,
But darkness is our companion, and Fright
our fiery devotion smothers

We surged out of aisles like bitter tears,
The even voice rang out in the dark,
"Go! There is nothing left for you here."
We went out into the night, silent and stark



_______

Photo by Carolina Pimenta on Unsplash

Here's to the Firelight

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow Storm

_______

We watched the first red blaze appear, 

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

Until the old, rude-furnished room 

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 

While radiant with a mimic flame 

Outside the sparkling drift became, 

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 

— John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow-Bound

It is snowing down in big flakes from the street lamp circles tonight. There is the hush that comes with it. Kept within my cabin by the drifting snow, there is no radiant fireplace—no flickering flames to 'drive away dark spirits'. The dark spirits of loneliness crowd into  my little house and it feels like all friends are shut out, indeed. There is still a cosy "privacy of Storm" feeling, but whenever I think of Whittier, there is a bittersweet ache. You see, Whittier reminds me of you, my friend.

My copy of Snow-Bound is in a slim green book. A book that used to be yours. A book with your mother's handwriting in the front, inscribed with the year I last saw you. How can six years go so quickly and feel so eternal? So much has changed in those years—especially in my family. Too much has stayed the same—especially in my bad habits. Six years ago last week, I flew to Alaska to see you. I was worried for you. When I finally found you, waiting in your truck, my worry increased. The lack of sleep from many flights wasn't helping, but even so, my panic mode rightly kicked on. Something was desperately wrong with the friend I once knew. He was gone. . . Gone away, leaving someone else in his stead, someone I didn't know.

What I didn't expect was that I wouldn't see you again after our initial time together. You dropped me off with your friends and left me. Though they graciously looked after me that day and the next, dropping me off at the airport in good time, it wasn't strangers I had come to visit. Yet it was only strangers whom I found. You were a stranger to me—not letting me hug you, not making eye-contact with me, not making sense, not feeling safe. You simply left me.

What I didn't expect was to have you cut me off after that visit. You made sure I got home okay, but from that time on you didn't call and you didn't respond to my letters. It would be years before I found out that you never even opened my letters after that point. All because I wasn't someone else. Being myself—your friend—wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. I sat at the airport that February, tears running down my face, feeling horribly abandoned. . .because you had left me.

No one seemed to understand what a devastating loss it was to me, your friendship. So I swallowed my grief deep inside of me. What I didn't expect was to feel abandoned for all those years. You would cross my mind with great frequency, and I felt a wall. . .a barrier that I couldn't cross. And you wouldn't cross it. Or maybe you couldn't cross it either. I reached out my hand again and again—hoping—but yours never met it. You left me to reach out into the unfriendly darkness, alone.

What I didn't expect was how much I trusted your last promise to me. As long as she was safe and alive, I need not fear for your life. But I guess it got to be too much, living. And maybe you forgot that promise. All I know is, one September day, you left me—irrevocably. I didn't expect that the previous five plus years of ache would come spilling out in wave after wave after wave.

In one sense, you died years ago, but I didn't know how to grieve that living death. So, I tucked it away inside of me, because no one else cared, no one understood that aching, living loss. But in your physical death, people cared, they tried to help, they listened, they hugged me. . . At last they understood that I was experiencing a deep, deep loss. Wave after wave after wave of grief left me gasping.

What I didn't expect was to find this gem in abandonment: Abandonment (n.): from 1839 as "condition of being forsaken." In music, Italian abbandonatamente is the instruction to play so as to make the time subordinate to the feeling.

Not the feelings subordinate to the restrictions of time. . . No, time must surrender, be sub-ordinate to the feeling.

The first six weeks of grief were like a hurricane, one pounding wave after another, huge and crushing. Then I finally had a lovely day hiking with a friend, a day where I didn't cry—and I felt so disloyal to you. I visited your family a few weeks later—the time together was both healing and intensely painful. Remembering heals, but it leaves a bigger hole, a deeper ache. I felt like you had died all over again.

Then I'm not sure what happened. . . Maybe it was self-protection, but in December I was mostly numb. I wanted so badly to remember your visit ten years before, but it was like it had been erased from my mind—and not only mine, but everyone else's. There were no photos of our time together, few memories. . . I just wanted people to talk about you with me, but it was like you were gone, like you walked out of our memories. And again, it felt like no one understood why it mattered so much that we were friends, why it hurt like Hell that you were gone. It was still so raw that all I wanted to do was cover up my hurt, yet I wanted to share it, too. . .

What I didn't expect was the waves of loneliness. In my home. At my parents' house. At work. With dear friends who didn't understand. With friends who expected (even more so now) me to 'get better' or 'get over' my grief. I didn't expect this clawing, craving loneliness that nothing can fill. I didn't expect the emptiness, the feeling invisible, the feeling abandoned to drive me to distraction. But it has.

If numbness felt horrible—like fuzz between me and everyone and everything—distraction feels. . .not horrible. It even feels normal. Not exactly like nothing happened, but certainly like I'm pretending on the surface that nothing happened. I am silly at work, I laugh with friends, I flirt with the mailman, I try to reach out to others, I fill too many hours with noise—audible and visual. But in the distraction and in the intense loneliness I have been reckless, terrifying myself. Behind it all, I miss the grief (though it still washes up at odd hours). The steady waves of grief have been my connection. My companion. The distraction hasn't been all bad—it has pointed me outward; it has made me face some things internally; it helps other people feel more normal around me (I think)—I have too often felt like a "death's head" as Lewis described it in A Grief Observed. I don't want people to feel like they need to avoid me or to feel awkward around me because I am grieving. So, I've hidden my grief over your loss yet again. But I feel out of step from God, from others, and from you, because I stepped out of the flow of grief. 

For months I tried to maintain the feelings, tried to grieve well, to the point that I was exhausted. So, I took a break. . .but the break has ceased being restorative (like a sabbath day) and has morphed into laziness (like a month of Sundays). I keep wanting to go back to the grief, but I've changed and the grief has changed, and I can't go back. I can only go forward. . .but I don't know how. I feel lost about how to grieve now, about where I should be at this point. I can't compare my grief to others'—I just want to know for myself where I need to be. I don't know, though. I simply know that I feel lonely like I never have before. I feel abandoned. And that feeling does not yield to time. Six years later, I still grieve that you left me.

Six months later, I grieve that you abandoned life. I don't want to ignore the emotions or push them aside until I can 'deal with' them. I need to know these feelings—not to be ruled by them, but to know them—and I need time to be subordinate to my emotions. It can take as long as it needs to take to grieve. And the grief is allowed to change. There must not of necessity be colossal breakers all the time to prove that I care about you. I don't have to cry every day to prove my friendship and affection. There will always be a hole in my life without you. And there will always be so much of me that has been shaped by you that you cannot be wholly gone. You may have left me, but you also changed me. You shaped me in so many ways.

Distractions can be okay for short stints. By the kindness of God, this season of distraction has had its healing moments, in spite of its recklessness. Still, I want the upcoming season of Lent to be one where I learn to hold grief and gladness together. Not one or the other, but together. I want time to be in subjugation to the feelings. If I need to feel sad, even in front of other people, then I will. I don't have to be 'over' my grief by now. I will never be 'over' the grief that you are gone. There will always be the absence of you in my life. Even if your presence was quiet, and sometimes unnoticed, it was monumental to me. I miss you so very much, Aaron. I pray that the flame of your fire is radiantly mimicked upon the sparkling snow of my life. 

Remember...

Sometimes special dates slip by, unnoticed in the hustle of other things. Today, even though my family and I spent an enjoyable, full day at the Creation Museum, I knew underneath that what day it was. Today is my grandmother's birthday... The first one we have had without her. She would have been ninety-five if she had not passed away in March. I think it was a hard day for my dad, but he didn't say anything about it; just patiently drove us to and from the museum, treating us to dinner on the way home.

Sometimes I think folks forget that Christmas isn't all joy, peace, and cheer. For many persons, Christmas is a lonely time of year, an angry season, an unmet expectation, or a painful time. We feel more keenly the loss of loved ones, the inability to afford gifts, or the bitterness of disappointed hopes.  

This Christmas in the Midwest feels more like Spring than Winter—with foggy mists, rainy nights, and bearable temperatures. It feels more like a long visit with my family than a holiday. It feels like anything but Christmas. There are a myriad of reasons for this, one of which is the loss of my grandmother. I sat in, or near, her pew by myself on Christmas Eve, holding back tears. Not only was my grandmother's place empty, but my Dad decided not to attend with me this year. I'm glad he didn't, because life has been hard enough for him the last two or three years—he didn't need to be sad on Christmas Eve, too. 

So, I inhaled sorrow co-mingled with the joyous annunciation to the shepherds that a Saviour was born unto them—those rough, smelly, unnoticed men. To them, the ones who lived on the fringes, beneath the lower class, out of the minds of nearly everyone—outcasts. Yet, not cast out by God. He remembered the lowly and forgotten shepherds. He remembers still those on the fringes of society, the edges of church sanctuaries, and the ones separated from everyone else by grief, loneliness, and heartbreak. God remembers. He gently nudges those of us who feel like outcasts, reminding us that all those years ago, the Timeless One stepped into time to be the Saviour of the world. And that is what He is, still. In the midst of the pain and disappointment that separates us from feeling like it's Christmas, God is with us—Emmanuel. 

This Christmas feels more like Spring than Winter—perhaps this is God's physical reminder to us that new life is stirring under the mud and dirt. We must remember that the grave is not the end. Even things that seem dead and buried might be raised to new and beautiful life, like Spring flowers. Perhaps I am naïve, or put too much faith in impressions, but the winds of change seem to be blowing away the ashes of this last year to the four corners of the earth. In the soil of hearts and relationships, the life of the Spirit of God is breathing. He is stirring up the earth 'round the roots of the good seed and bulbs of Truth—life is wriggling beneath the surface of the new year.

New years themselves are the edges of one season blending into another, of one year gracefully giving way to the next in the Great Dance. Sometimes the sadness in our lives slowly fades into joy, without us knowing the moment of transition. And sometimes new life is breathed into dead hearts and relationships. As G. K. Chesterton explains:

"...boundaries are the most beautiful things in the world. To love anything is to love its boundaries; thus children will always play on the edge of anything. They build castles on the edge of the sea, and can only be restrained by public proclamation and private violence from walking on the edge of the grass. For when we have come to the end of a thing we have come to the beginning of it."

Said another way: fringes and edges are where change is occurring. New beginnings are at the boundaries of old endings. The shepherds on Bethlehem's hillside were on the cusp of a new life, of seeing the world turned upside down. Surely they remembered the night that angels rent the heavens with the news of a Saviour in those silent, dark days. So, too, at Christmas we remember the hard, the dark nights, and the loss—but those horizon line is drawing near and we are coming to the first word in the first chapter of a new beginning. Let us remember, and look forward with eager expectation to what Jesus has set before us.

Treading the Sea of Darkness

Noisy chatter clutters the lobby. The porch overflows with sound, seeping from every crevice of the hotel, like grapes, crushed. And I? I feel alone. Wearing the mask of a smile, while my soul wrestles with the Fall. I slip out into the rain-cooled air, the cloak of night hiding me from peering eyes and piercing laughter. 

How many times have I sat in a crowd of persons, even those I know, and felt the icy tentacles of loneliness? How often have I painted a smile on my lips, yet my eyes are belied by tears? Can I number the times I have listened to another's excitement while holding in my sorrows? How often have I concealed my joy in the face of someone else's pain? I do not begrudge those emotionally mixed moments. I do not regret that I have the privilege of of weeping and rejoicing with others. Nor am I deeply hurt that only a few look carefully into my honest eyes to see what is inside. Then I wonder, how many times have I not looked closely at bloodshot eyes? How often am I so lost in my own life that I neglect the trials and joys beneath the surface in others? 

This is the Fall–this neglect of others–written large and painted in bold black. The Fall, that locks us within ourselves, isolating us from God and man. The Fall, so murky and deep as to drown us in its depths. It is the Fall that prevents us from seeing life as a whole. We see only bits and pieces of our own lives—of others' lives—and we think those slivers are the whole story. We slosh in the muck of those black-sodden brushstrokes, seeing only a tary mess as far as our eye-scope can reach. 'This isn't how the story is supposed to go', we whisper fiercely to ourselves, kicking to stay afloat. 

But how is the story supposed to go? We think we have a decent plot. 'In the end this would bring God praise. Isn't that good? Isn't that the goal?' We do not see that the darkness of sin has been made the paint for the brush, the ink for the pen. The viscous stream in which we are drowning is the ink, undried. All the harrowing horrors of the Fall that dig their claws into our hearts, our homes, and our heroes have been ground into charcoal-hued pigment, brushing letters on parchment. Our grandiose plots for how our story should go are so small they are invisible upon the page. We swim in the depths of merely one letter, thinking it is our entire story. The Author and Finisher of our faith sees our script from the right perspective, much bigger–yet humbler–than we ever dared to dream or hope. 

Just because God allows us to be free agents in the writing does not mean that we are the author. Though He gives us the intolerable compliment of using our hands, our lips to accomplish His purposes, it does not follow that we know how immense the story, how deep the brokenness–and deeper still the redemption. We do not know how those letters, words, paragraphs, plots and subplots are being woven together to form a far-reaching tale. A true tale, meant for all the world, not only our corner of it, in this place and time.

What about the days when the narrative is dark, when we have tread the turbid waters of the Fall so long that we cannot muster another kick? Will the waves overflow us after all? God forbid! I say this fervently, yet, I am not the one abandoned by my husband. I am not left fatherless. I am not the one cast out by my family for doing the right thing. I do not have to face the long road of loneliness ahead if no reconciliation comes. No, but I can walk alongside my friends in those dark places. When they cannot tread thick waters any longer, I can hold them and swim for them. When I tire, it will be another's turn to support them. This is the body of Jesus, working together toward whole-ness, toward holiness. This one dark letter is not all that is on the page, it is not the whole story, though we or others may stick fast in one place far longer than we thought possible.

I still want to hide the holes in my soul, punctured by the Fall. I want to hide my own sin. I want to run away from the pain that the sins of others have caused me, my family, and my friends. I want life to be full of good things that are delightful and do not wound. But what I need it not to hide, is not isolation. What I need—what we all need—is for 'the light to shine in the darkness, and the darkness not [to] overcome it.' We all need times of solitude, not to forsake others, but times before God in honest conversation, times away to draw us back into the body of believers, toward holiness. Sin separates, it is said. Let us be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, then. Let us reconcile others to God by walking with them in their darkness—even when the journey is years long and the dawn is far, far off. May the light of Truth shine all over the darkness, making the Author's story—so much bigger than what we planned or imagined—visible to the watching world.

Lost, lost are all our losses;
Love set forever free;

The full life heaves and tosses

Like an eternal sea!

One endless story!

One poem spread abroad!

And the sun of all our glory

Is the countenance of God.*

~ Johanna

___________________

* George MacDonald, 5th Hymn to the Night

Loneliness or Solitude?

“Language ... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.”

~ Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now

If God is with us, why are we lonely?

"Our two little granddaughters have a sense of community which many adults have lost; people have developed less a sense of community than a loneliness which they attempt to assuage by being with other people constantly, and on a superficial level only... The loneliness, the namelessness of cocktail-party relationships surround us. We meet, but even when we kiss we do not touch. We avoid the responsibility of community."   

       ~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season
(pg 182, emphasis mine)

There is a steady song of rain on the eaves, the dimpling of ever-widening puddles in the yard by so many hundreds of thousands of droplets. For me, the grey skies and the heavy rain are a comfort, a friend inviting me to listen to their story, a warm mug of tea in hand. For many, though, the slashing rain and slate-coloured sky are dull and dreary. The dark of night is not a quieting friend, a place to be still and ponder, but an unwelcome enemy: loneliness. 

Loneliness and Christmas go hand-in-hand in our confused culture. Stress, blow-ups, and annual arguments are many persons' only Christmas traditions. If you are honest, you probably find loneliness and stress normal rather than shocking. Our lives do not match up to "Christmas: Hollywood style." When 26 December rolls around, we still live in a draughty house, the scroll-work on the bannister still comes off in our hand, and we are still working at the Bailey Building and Loan Company rather than travelling to Tahiti or going to college. 

Perhaps It's A Wonderful Life, more than any other Christmas film, shows what does make 26 December different, in spite of life circumstances remaining the same: community. George Bailey is given a new perspective to see that the people in his life love him, are willing to give their money --and still more, their prayers-- for him because he is part of their community. George has given his time, his own money, his hopes, his dreams, his whole life to the people of Bedford Falls. At his hour of need his neighbours do not leave him high and dry, they give out of their meagre store. Not only is his community built of those neighbours, there is also a heavenly community that he is part of, too. 

Though 'community' is a buzzword, particularly in churches, our culture knows little of it. That is why loneliness is more familiar to us than community. That is why we can sit at a long table of friends and feel completely isolated. Community is not 'being with other people constantly' - it is being with other people. It is being silent with them or crying with them when loss comes. It is walking with them through the burned out rubble of their home, or the shattered pieces of their marriage. It is feeling awkward and useless when you do not know what to say about a friend's difficult situation, but hugging them anyway. It is making the most of the time you have with a friend who is moving away, seeking to sweeten the loss before it comes. It is giving the shirt off your back, the food out of your fridge, the money out of your bank account to serve another. It is opening your home for dinner, conversation, laughter, hugs, and tears. It is reading together. It is sitting on the floor, huddled by the heater in the arctic cold of winter, just talking. It is receiving help and encouragement whilst climbing a mountain, and turning around to give your hand to that same friend when the rocks at the top are too hard to climb alone. 

That is community, is it not? Not letting someone climb alone. It is instead walking alongside others, being encouraged by those ahead to come "Further up, and further in." It is repeating that cry to your companions, and to those on the path behind you. Community is being responsible for one another - even when it means paying someone else's debt, or bearing their sorrow, or sharing their sweaty, infected smell. And it means receiving love, healing, help, and grace, too. It goes back and forth, constantly.

At the time of year when we remember that Jesus Himself left the community of Heaven to wear our smudge and share our smell, how can we feel alone? Yet we often do. 'The-day-after-Christmas' of our whole life feels devoid of real community, we do not even know where to look for such a thing. All we see is a black gulf of loneliness that never seems to change, no matter how many parties we attend, or evenings a week that we are busy. I speak as one who cannot give easy answers to loneliness. I spent many years as a child and young adult without close friends. I found myself feeling alone at a crowded table recently. But those are moments I have also found that the LORD has not left me. He whispers, sometimes shouts, to me in those moments that I am loved with an everlasting love. And I feel spoiled... Because I often find myself laughing until I cry over games with my adopted 'roommates'. Or laughing with my work friends and neighbours at a gingerbread shack that will not stay together, in spite of much 'gluing' with icing. I find myself blinking back tears of humility at how much I am loved and included by so many others.

You are not alone.

God is with us, Himself...and as He is revealed in His saints. Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He!

~ Johanna

Buried Heart

Here lies the heart of me
Buried with an unmarked gravestone
No name, just the dates it lived and died
Now I want it back

Always finding but never seeing the way
Teach me how not to be afraid
(Teach me to love again, to love again, once again)

Take me down and let me see
The well that’s full of bravery
And baptise me so I’ll be free
To do the things I fear

~ The Well and the Gravestone, by The Vespers

So many of The Vespers's lyrics have arrested my heart this past week. From sweet love songs, to exploring the depths of life and death, and various relationships there has been much to ponder. I could write full posts on at least half of the songs on the album 'Tell Your Mama'.


How about you? Have you ever felt like your heart is dead and buried? Have you ever wondered if you will ever feel again, or love again? Have you ever pleaded with God to restore the years the locusts have eaten? Do you ever find yourself wishing you could feel something, even pain?

If you answered 'yes' to any of the above questions, then it is possible that you, too, have entombed your heart beneath an anonymous stone slab.

I have no easy answers about the resurrection of a buried heart. In fact, I have no answers at all. What I do know is that in the last weeks I have been given the gift of feeling joy, and pain in the face of others's losses. For quite some time I have prayed that God would teach my heart how to feel, how to love and be loved (firstly by Him, as well as others). He is gracious to answer, even though the process is slow.

Perhaps I am at fault in the snail's pace of the healing process. One has to hold still under the Surgeon's scalpel for Him to be able to work - and I wiggle a lot. O God, help me to be still!

How I wish I had more well-formed thoughts on this topic, but I am still being resurrected.

I remain under the Mercy,
~ Johanna

Bearing the Cost

Recently I have been re-reading the classic Hinds' Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. My dad first read the book to me when I was quite young, and then again around high school. I have read it myself a couple of times also. I learn something new (or in a deeper way) every time I read it.

Hinds' Feet is an allegory of sorts, with the main character, Much Afraid, allowing the Shepherd to plant the seed (thorn) of love in her heart and lead her on a journey to the High Places. Her first check comes when the Shepherd begins to lead her directly away from the mountains and through a vast desert. Here she learns the first lesson in love, Acceptance with Joy. In the desert sand where a few drops of water happen to splash from a spring, there is a single golden flower persevering; its name is Acceptance with Joy.

As Much Afraid continues her journey through the desert she does not turn toward the high places, but is led toward the Sea of Loneliness. There are many lessons to be learned here and in the next part of the journey, but finally the Shepherd leads her toward the mountains again. Now she has circuited the range and finds herself at a sheer, seemingly impassable precipice. The Shepherd tells her that to make her lame feet like hinds' feet she has to come this harder way. He promises her that she will learn the next lesson of love as she climbs the Precipice of Injury (not to be confused with Mt. Reviling or Persecution) with her strong companions, Sorrow and Suffering.

On the second day of her journey, in a lonely cleft in the sheer rock, Much Afraid meets a blood-red flower, glowing in the sunrise. The flower is named 'Bearing the Cost' (though some call it 'Forgiveness'). At one point it says,

"I was separated from all my companions, exiled from home, carried here and imprisoned in this rock. It was not my choice, but the work of others who, when they had dropped me here, went away and left me to bear the results of what they had done..."

In spite of ill treatment, the little flower continues that in this lonely and desolate place there is nothing to distract it from its Love, the sun.

"He shines upon me and makes me to rejoice, and has atoned for me all that was taken from me and done against me. There is no flower in all the world more blessed or more satisfied than I, for I look up to [my Love] as a weaned child and say, 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire but Thee'."

I just loved the little flower's response to adversity and loneliness: Now there is no distraction from my Love. There is no flower in all the world more blessed or more satisfied than I.

What an attitude to have! Rather than seeing our circumstances as hard, impossible, and solitary, we can both accept them with joy and bear the cost. We find that in the isolated places there is nothing to distract us from our Love: Jesus.

The passage that Bearing the Cost quotes from is Psalm 73. I have expanded it below for the sake of having some context. At the beginning of Psalm 73 the psalmist objects that the wicked prosper and do not seem to experience pain or poverty. However, like a sonnet there is a volta, a turning point; the writer thinks these things until he goes in to the Sanctuary of God. Then he realises his error and misunderstanding. He finishes with these thoughts (vv 23-28):

Nevertheless I am continually with You;
You hold me by my right hand.
You will guide me with Your counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but You?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For indeed, those who are far from You shall perish;
You have destroyed all those who desert You for harlotry.
But it is good for me to draw near to God;
I have put my trust in the Lord GOD,
That I may declare all Your works.

Indeed, may I declare in trials and loneliness that there is now nothing to distract me from my Love. May I discover that there is no person in all the world as blessed and satisfied as me. And may I truly be able to declare that there is none that I desire besides Jesus.

~ Johanna

The Yellow Cat

Some nights are made for ponderings under the stars. Most nights are made for drinking tea with cream and sugar. Few nights should be marked by tears. Fewer still seem to be given to great revelations. Tonight is a rare combination of all of the above.

While I was staring up into the heavenlies and slowly sipping my mug of English breakfast, something darted past me. It was a yellow cat. It skittered into the night, leaving me to my thoughts. After pulling the scattered leaves of my mind into a paragraph or two of thought, I decided to put my laundry in the dryer.

At the laundry room door, I saw the yellow cat. It looked frightened. I called softly to it. I waited. He waited. He mewed. I called to Him again. Instead of appearing terrified, he took a step toward me. As soon as he sniffed my hand and I scratched his head a shift happened. The apprehension disappeared. The yellow cat began to frantically rub against my legs and seek my hand to pet him.

At my ankles was a love-starved, attention-hungry cat. My view shifted. How many persons do I know who are love-starved and attention hungry? Once they realize that their Maker desires to be their Husband (Isaiah 54:5) they become frantic with excitement. Those who were once afar off, outcasts, windowed, unlovely, and unloved are now accepted, loved, part of the group - chosen.

How would you feel at that reversal of position? Wouldn't you be ecstatic? Wouldn't you put your paws on the Maker's shin to try to get closer to His hand like that yellow cat did to me?

Our Maker sees our loneliness. He sees our tear-streaked and frightened faces. He calls to us and waits. He is patient with our apprehension. He calls again. He accepts us, tames us, makes us like Him.

Tears burned in my eyes when I realized that in spite of my confidence in Christ, I too, feel like a rejected stray sometimes. Tonight not only did my heart ache for those who are love-starved, but I realized something more... I am the yellow cat.

~ Johanna